Journal of Global Buddhism

Introduction: Critical Notes on the Lived Karma Conference

2023-04-10T19:51:24+00:00

No abstract available.

Collective-Karma-Cluster-Concepts in Chinese Canonical Sources: A Note

2023-04-02T15:37:29+00:00

This is a preliminary research note on the cluster concepts of collective karma in Chinese Canonical sources. The goal is to draw scholarly attention to this vast, understudied area of research and to invite more scholars to join this collective effort.

Karma as a Means of Wartime Political Mobilization: A Reading of Chinese Buddhists’ Response to the Second Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945

2023-05-11T13:06:26+00:00

The concept of karma is of great significance for scholars of modern China seeking to comprehend the impact of Buddhism on the Second Sino-Japanese War. This paper explores the sociopolitical function of karma within China’s wartime society and its profound implications for Nationalist politics. It examines how karma was articulated by wartime Chinese Buddhists as a means of Nationalist mobilization for China's war effort. Moreover, this paper situates the discourse on karma within the framework of modern nationalism by comparing the sociopolitical utilization of karma by Chinese and Japanese Buddhists during the war. As such, it reveals that the divergent interpretations of karma by Buddhists in the two nation-states had enduring and far-reaching consequences on their respective societies.

Universal Karma

2023-04-02T20:48:04+00:00

Drawing on recent ethnographic research at a temple-based Buddhist charitable foundation in mainland China, this study joins recent scholarship that questions an understanding of karma as a solely individual soteriological enterprise. It shows how both volunteers and paid staff at the charitable foundation, many of whom were practicing Buddhists, focused on helping both people and other sentient beings as soteriological goals in their own right apart from a consideration of individual karmic benefit. Inspired by environmental awareness, this soteriological orientation saw the karmic fate of all beings as inextricably bound together, an orientation we can refer to as universal karma.

Sociokarma and Kindred Spirits: An Acknowledgement

2023-05-12T15:33:02+00:00

Jonathan S. Walters’ sevenfold sociokarma typology considers only two broad categories of karma: that of an individual agent or that of an institution or social group. This brief study reframes Walters’ sociokarma away from agent-centered myopia to relation-centered analysis. With illustrations from the contemporary Thai religious landscape, we can observe how various forms of relational karma intuitively account for spirits and material objects as a given. In other words, “collective karma” must also address entanglements; Entanglements of not only individual agents, be they persons or institutions, but also of ancestors, ghosts, deities, and various material culture—an agency of relations. Hence, ultimately, this note calls for the acknowledgement of spirits and “stuff” as inclusive in conceptions of collective karma.

Interpersonal Karma: A Note

2023-03-28T16:02:42+00:00

It has been twenty years since Jonathan S. Walters sought to dislodge the ingrained understanding of karma as a purely individual phenomenon. Since then, interesting work has been done on this issue, but less than one might hope and much of it siloed, addressing either texts or ethnography, either this region or that one. One of the most exciting aspects of a recent symposium on lived karma was the opportunity to explore these issues with scholars of widely varied expertise. One theme that emerged is what I will term “interpersonal karma.” Across the Buddhist world, we find not only that our relationships are constituted by karmic affinities, but also that in many contexts those relationships are seen as the media through which karma unfolds. These understandings not only provide frameworks for interpreting relationships but underwrite ritual technologies through which people can form, maintain, or disperse these affinities.

Negotiating Boundaries Between "Religious" and "Secular": A Struggle for the Sense of Collectivity Among Ambedkarite Buddhists in Maharashtra

2023-04-21T08:41:30+00:00

Since the first mass conversion of Dalits to Buddhism in 1956, followers of B. R. Ambedkar's vision have propagated Buddhism throughout India, creating various activist networks across, but not limited to, Maharashtra. Despite their aspirations for socio-political change and emancipation for marginalized communities experiencing caste discrimination, Ambedkarite Buddhists have faced challenges in mobilization and organization since the demise of Ambedkar. This article addresses the struggle of building a sense of collectivity within the Ambedkarite Buddhist population, offering insights from the perspective of young Ambedkarite Buddhists in Mumbai. The ethnographic study primarily focuses on interpreting the Ambedkarite Buddhist tradition and its position within the broader Buddhist framework and delves into the divergence in efforts to emplace Buddhism on the "religious-secular" spectrum among practitioners. The article aims to provide an interpretation of the challenges faced by the Ambedkarite Buddhists in pursuing a unified front for effecting social change in contemporary India.

Ravana's Kingdom: The Ramayana and Sri Lankan History from Below

2023-06-09T08:27:01+00:00

Sera Monastery

2023-06-05T10:22:37+00:00

Mapping Modern Mahayana: Chinese Buddhism and Migration in the Age of Global Modernity

2023-06-05T10:25:23+00:00